FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Stanley Cup sat on a table bathed in light as people – most of them women in red, the men in dark suits with red ties – gathered around it. It was an opportunity for them to take a photo with the trophy, the trophy that many of them had worked their whole lives to win, that they had celebrated over the summer and that they will defend next season.

Kickoff is Tuesday when the Florida Panthers take on the Boston Bruins, the team they have defeated in each of the last two Stanley Cup playoffs, including six games in the Eastern Conference second round last season.

They’ll raise their championship banner before the puck drops at Amerant Bank Arena (7 p.m. ET; ESPN+, ESPN, SN, TVAS), and then, well, it all starts again.

“We deserve to celebrate a great achievement all summer long,” said Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov. “Tomorrow we can finally play again and fight for it again.”

The Panthers will try to do what only two teams have done since 1998 – the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017 and the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021 – defend their title.

“I’m looking forward to hockey,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Really, it’s great that it’s Boston because we’ve played this team 21 times in the last two years and it’s been 21 fantastic games in terms of intensity and physicality. Last year’s series was as difficult as any series I’ve ever coached. It was as tough and physically demanding a series as the entire playoff round.

“So, it fits. It’s the right way. We played so hard to get there. It should be Boston because they’re the team that probably played us as hard as anyone else.”

When the Panthers came into camp last season after losing to the Vegas Golden Knights in five games in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, they took a matter-of-fact approach. They were focused. They were determined.

Maurice wasn’t sure what he would get when they returned to camp this season.

So he looked for tells.

“Not their numbers, but Barkov doesn’t have to go full throttle in these tests. He is still part of the team. And they all did. For me, that was the first big anecdotal sign,” Maurice said. “Then the numbers came back and we were fitter than last year at this time. And in the first four days of this year, we surpassed last year, which was better than the year before.”

He saw it in the early stages of training camp, when the veterans did their jobs solidly and calmly, knowing when they needed to be good and doing it. He saw it in the confidence of understanding how far they could go with all this work and the willingness to do it again. In that they don’t give in, even if they might want to.

“You’re a little more experienced,” Maurice said. “However, we don’t start where we left off. And I’m not trying to take the pressure off the team. You have to push through the adversity. You need it. And I think we’ll have a lot.”

The schedule includes 14 consecutive games. The NHL Global Series Finland 2024, presented by Fastenal, will take place in November. Teams will take shots at the Panthers every night.

Nothing will be easy this season.

“I don’t think they’re afraid,” Maurice said. “They are not afraid of adversity coming their way. I don’t think they feel particularly special. I’ve been waiting for this. I think they have enough humility.”

And when that adversity comes, when the injuries arrive, the season drags on and they lose a few games in a row, they can think back to Monday night, to the feeling of opening boxes and revealing the sparkling rings they contain with 554 diamonds , 16 princess-cut rubies, one round ruby, nine round blue sapphires and 37 round yellow sapphires totaling 15.6 carats. The rings are so detailed that they also include an image of a rat and a WWE Championship belt, symbols that the Panthers have adopted throughout their history and during their celebrations this summer.

And maybe they aren’t enough.

“(Carter) Verhaeghe brought his other ring here and two rings look pretty cool on your hand,” forward Sam Bennett said, referring to the ring Verhaeghe won with the Lightning in 2020. “I’d like to fill my hand a little more.”